WRITER

Leftover Lunch

Visiting the employee refrigerator at the office to deposit my bag lunch, I come across a Styrofoam plate bearing yesterday’s – or is it last week’s? – catered chow: crusty chicken legs with a chunk bitten off; bits of picked-over macaroni and cheese; limp broccoli; brown(ish) rice with the corpse of a yellow caterpillar atop it (no, wait, that’s more mac-and-cheese). The routine around here is familiar: the caterer arrives at 11 in the morning and leaves food to be served at noon; at 2:15 the meeting adjourns; by 3, room-temperature leftovers have been plunked onto a side table to be scavenged by passersby; at 5:30 or so, an invisible angel of thrift scrapes the remnant morsels from several foil serving platters onto a single plate and quietly slips it into the fridge, unlabeled and uncovered. There, the “food” is destined to age for several weeks, until, finally, another angel takes it upon him or herself to lay the shrunken mass to rest. All in all, this is better than witnessing someone eat it.